Tag Archives: Announcements

I want to take a second to talk to you about something you may find useful. But let me make it clear it concerns a paid campaign currently running on the site.

Some of you may know we have been partners with Federated Media for all graphical ads on OhGizmo! for quite some time. We love them not only for making it possible to make a living without showing you ads about punching a monkey to get a free iPod, but also because the FM team really likes to think outside the box.

Case in point, the Toshiba “Laptop Experts” campaign. On this site, readers can ask about their computer problems (not restricted to Toshiba products, by the way) and may get their questions answered by one of the several bloggers participating. Up until recently, the only way to get a question answered was by visiting the site and posting your question. But now there’s a little widget you can download (pictured above), allowing you to ask anything you like right from your desktop, without ever needing to even open a browser window. Your question will then be submitted to the team and you’ll be notified if and when it gets answered.

The download link is below. You should be aware that you’ll need to install Adobe AIR to get it working, but it is pretty slick.

Hey guys. Over the coming days, some of you will notice ads running that talk about the “I’m Talkathon”. This is an initiative from Microsoft to support a select group of charities (pictured above). The link below will take you to the I’m Talkathon blog, where you can find out more about all this. Make no mistake, this is a blog maintained by MS (this is clearly stated in their rather large disclaimer at the bottom), but the entire campaign seems to have a conversational, social element to it which we find interesting.

And aside from running ads for the initiative, we’re participating in our own way. As some of you may remember, we now have a super-awesome (*cough cough*) T-Shirt. And while we initially pledged $1 for every shirt sold, we’ve decided to up that, and donate all proceeds to UNICEF (one of the charities involved). And finally, to make things a little more interesting for you guys, if you purchase a shirt in the next 30 days, you’ll automatically be entered to win $100.

We’re not thinking we’ll change the world with this, but ever little bit helps.

After how many weeks of work, of back and forth, of a design contest and its failure, of crying and moaning… we have us the official OhGizmo! T-Shirt. Props to the Splitreason team for this. This first production run is available now in Black, sizes small to double-X Large, and will retail for $18.95.

Remember, we’re giving a dollar away to charity for every T-Shirt sold, and we’re thinking we’ll send the money to UNICEF, unless you guys have a better idea.

I’m about to head down to Maker Faire, which takes place in San Mateo over the weekend. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a DIY festival, which means that there’s all kinds of wicked cool stuff on display. Flaming things, things that make noise, things that shoot stuff, and lots and lots of things with blinky lights. Tons of pictures and video forthcoming over the next few days, and don’t miss all the awesome robot goodness that I’ll be posting on BotJunkie.

So, by a wide margin, the above design was chosen by you guys. We’re not actually going to make this shirt, but to be fair to everyone, we’ll give the prizes to the person who did this. I guess we can call it a consolation prize? Whatever it is, congrats to you my dear man. I don’t know if you wish to be named, so I won’t, but I’ll be in touch by email.

Meanwhile, the team at Splitreason is hard at work making us a design. We’re all holding our breaths that it’ll be nice, and we’ll let y’alls know soon’s it’s ready.

Just want to let you guys know that if you leave a comment, and it doesn’t appear immediately, it’s because our spam filter, Akismet, has decided that everything is spam. I’ve spent a good deal of time manually removing comments from the spam queue, so your words should eventually appear. I’ve also contacted the Akismet team, but who knows how long it’ll be. So, keep leaving comments… it just might take a little longer to appear. And I’ll let y’alls know when things are back to normal.

You guys spoke, and we heard you. For those of you with no clue of what I’m talking about, I’m referring to this article where we announce that no one won our T-Shirt design contest. Many of you pointed out that it wasn’t fair to those who worked hard at these designs, and that even if we don’t end up using any of the submissions, we should at least reward someone for their work.

You’re absolutely right.

So, big apologies are in order. We never meant to cop out of anything, and certainly didn’t mean to make you guys work with no intention of rewarding anyone. It was an error in judgment on my part, and I’m really sorry. At the time, it seemed to make sense, but looking back, it was stupid.

So, without further adieu, I’d like you guys to hit the jump so you can look at everything that came in, and vote on a winner. I’m not placing names next to the submissions, simply because someone might take offense. If you want to claim your work in the comments, you’re free to do so. To vote, simply leave a comment for your favorite.

And, finally, we’re aware that many of these are really cool. We didn’t decide to not use any (double negatives, eh?) because they all sucked, at all. We just wanted a little more. And thanks so much for everyone who entered.

[ Update: I’m aware that #11 and #1 are dupes. Further proof that yours truly is retarded. ]

It’s not that all the designs sucked. Although some did. It’s just that nothing really blew our minds. So we’ve decided to hire some pros, and pay for a design. And we’re really, really hoping that cash buys talent, or creativity, or whatever it is we wanted to see in a design.

For those of you who sent in a design, please, don’t be upset. Some of that stuff was great. It may just be that we’re suffering of a bad case of being too picky.

As of writing, there are about 36 hours left before the deadline on our T-Shirt design contest. We’ve received a good number of entries, a few of which are actually good, but I’m sure there’s more to come. Remember, up for grabs is an Oberon watch from Tokyoflash, a Neuros OSD and $200 of cold hard cash. Plus the pride of being the one who designed the OhGizmo T-Shirt.

So, that deadline again is 11:59PM, Eastern time.
Update: As someone pointed out in an email, maybe I should have included instructions on how to submit. Just send a small snapshot to ogcontests at gmail. If we select you, be prepared to have a PSD or vector file of your design.

OhGizmo! is a frequently updated blog that focuses on covering items that will appeal to a very specific and often very passionate audience: the geek. Aside from the fare of innovative consumer electronic products, the reader can expect to find news about geek culture, absurd inventions, awe inspiring technology, and an ever growing assortment of articles that we like to think fit within our view of what we’re calling the Geek Lifestyle.